I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say relationships are
easy. In my own experience, even the
best, long-lasting ones were a lot of work.
Seeing the picture of an old flame on social media under the heading
“People you might know” brought back some memories in September, as I
celebrated my 24th wedding anniversary with my wife, Miss Kitty.
No, I didn’t suddenly have a desire to kindle an old
fire. It wasn’t because we had some
terrible break-up, either. To be
completely truthful, we never made it to the boiling point at all, settling for
a low simmer for the entirety of the relationship. The key word in that last sentence is
settling, and it’s what I will write about today.
Long before I was an old married man with a house, two cars,
a house and children, I was a twenty-four year old who’d moved home after
college and wondered when the good times were going to begin. Moving from dead-end job to dead-end job, I
started to wonder why I had gone to college at all. Bumming around between theatre groups,
picking up parts here and there, was what passed for a life. The relationships I had ranged between
weeks-long and hours-long, a not unusual development for someone who’d recently
been dumped HARD. It’s even less unusual for people involved in community
theatre. Ask one of your actor friends
to explain it if you don’t understand…there’s only so much space on my page.
In late ’88, I wound up in a bedroom farce, playing the
ne’er-do-well, the second lead who would inevitably make every carnal mistake our
virtuous lead did not. This,
fortuitously, resulted in jumping in and out of bed with a sad-eyed young
actress who had no qualms with performing in a costume that was, for most of
the play, black bikini underwear.
Eventually, what we were pretending to do on-stage became a rehearsal
for what we were doing for real off-stage.
I’ll call her Ann Marie. Like me, she had just been through
a bad break-up. We were both a little
jaded, careful about who we allowed to get close to us emotionally. When the show ended and our relationship
didn’t, we saw each other in another light.
Most “show romances” cooled with the heat of the stage lights, going
from boiling-hot to tepid in a couple of hours.
Yet we continued to see each other, our close residential
proximity a great help. We ate out
sometimes, but just as often, ate at home.
She didn’t cook much, I was still learning, but when dinner was over,
we’d both had our fill. Christmas of
’88, my gift was a cast-iron frying pan that I had picked out. Though we never set up housekeeping together,
I had a drawer at the house she owned.
We were, succinctly put, constant companions.
As we celebrated her 33rd birthday, the age gap
didn’t bother me. I can’t go so far as
to say we were in love. The words were
never spoken. We were happy with each
other. It was enough for us at the
time. We were ideologically compatible
on most issues, though she was more conservative than I. We shared a bed at least a couple of times a
week and could pronounce ourselves satisfied.
We both wanted, in general, the same things for our lives. A home, a family, comfort that comes from a
long-term relationship. The past couplings
that had started, as Johnny Cash sang, “Hotter than a pepper sprout” had
diminished too rapidly. Could it not be
fate that we had met?
I was still toiling in entry-level jobs, while Ann Marie had
reached middle-management, making sixty grand a year (in 1988 dollars). As I said before, she owned her
dwelling. She doted on me and I returned
her affection. We could make it
work. With all of the financial stuff
out of the way, knowing that we could see eye-to-eye on most issues, we knew we
could make a go of a marriage. Though we
both wanted children, it was something neither of us wanted to rush into, which
should have told us something. Still,
though, I thought we were settled.
1989 was a different beast entirely, with a frenzy upon my
writing partner (Mike Davis) and me. We
were writing a script for spec for a fellow who was looking to produce a play
as his Master’s project at Eastern Michigan University, as well another project for a
group wanting a radio play to perform at the yearly “Fall Festival” in our
hometown of Plymouth, Michigan. Shortly
after a well-received performance of the latter, we got a green light for the
former. When I told Ann Marie, her usual
ready smile crumpled into a frown of sorts.
“They’re going to produce our musical!” I exalted. “Isn’t that great?”
The frown lines went deeper as she stroked my face. “Aw, honey, I think that’s great. But I just don’t want you to get your hopes
up.”
It was at that moment I knew that we were over. I couldn’t go forward without getting my
hopes up. I couldn’t LIVE without my
hopes up. It was everything I had ever
wanted, wrapped up in a neat little package.
When I laid it at her feet, it felt like she’d said, “Meh…”
I’ll spare you the details of the break-up, as I don’t
particularly want to recount them. I
didn’t see her again until the summer of ’89.
I was clearing the stage after a second production of that nascent
musical, the house lights up, the audience long gone. The sad look in her eyes had returned and we
tried to talk, but couldn’t find a topic that would keep us engaged. I came down from the stage and kissed her
cheek as she left. The woman who had
replaced her in my heart, the woman I would marry, had already cleared the
table where they sold screen-printed aprons that advertised the show. She was waiting for me in the parking lot so
we could get some post-show food and libations.
In a lot of ways, that long ago romance seems like a dream,
something I was part of, but not really.
The life I wanted, as a writer and performer, was the same. Yet, even though I never cracked the
big-time, the climb was exhilarating.
There were heart-stopping highs and lows. Not becoming as famous or well-known as my
heroes was okay, because we, Miss Kitty and I, did it together. We gave it all we had for as long as we
could.
My wife and I have afternoons like I used to have with Ann
Marie. We will look at each other,
curled up at opposite ends of the sofa on a serene afternoon and smile at each
other. Yet, in each wink, in each
twinkling eye, there is the story of what we did, of what we tried to do, what
we dared to do. We believed in each
other every day and did our best.
I sincerely hope Ann Marie found the person she was looking
for. I found the one for me. I know I’m
not the wild man I was way back then, the one that gave Ann Marie happiness. I am another man now, with a woman next to me
that believes in the dream.
We accomplished as much as we could, Ann Marie, Miss Kitty
and I. I am grateful to both of these
ladies, who showed me the difference between hoping and trying. You can say many things are settled. “Settling down” is another issue.
